A few weeks ago, I wrote an impassioned article for this newspaper defending the Confederate flag that flies over the South Carolina State House. I was livid over the very thought that someone would dare to attack our history, a history that I hold close to heart.
In the article, I spoke of our grand Southern society, of our desperate fight for independence, how we dared to stand up for what we believed was right even though it was wrong, and of the men (my ancestors included) who died on the battlefield.
Yet just before I sent it in, I realized something. I had written it in anger. So, I decided to allow myself a few days to think on the words I had written, words guaranteed to anger many people, and as the days passed, I slowly realized something that was hard to admit. I was wrong, terribly wrong.
The mistake I made as those words poured out is the same mistake that Southerners have made and continue to make. The history that I had been taught as a young man was a history of ideas. My grandfather told me countless stories that had been passed down through the generations, stories of the grand old South. In my imagination, it was a beautiful place — it was a place where the living image of Jeffersonian democracy was alive and well. I was taught, and believed wholeheartedly, that the fight for Southern society, despite its blemishes, was a just and worthy fight. I was proud to say that the blood of Confederates ran through my veins, and to a certain extent, I still am proud, but I was taught the wrong kind of history.
History, in its most basic form, is not about ideas; it is not about glorious battles and sweeping speeches. It is about people. These people, those who came before, lived and breathed just as we do now. They hoped. They loved. They explored. They dreamed of a better future, and they lived.
Our beloved old South did horrible, horrible things to human beings who were no different than you or I. They were never even allowed to taste freedom. They were nothing more than property to my ancestors. Livestock to be worked until flesh fell from bone. As someone whose skin is pale as snow, it is nearly impossible to imagine such a fate. Yet the very thought sends a shiver down my spine.
That flag — that horrifically beautiful flag — may inspire nothing but pride for many in the South, yet to the tens of millions of Americans whose ancestors felt the sting of the whip on their bare and beaten backs, it is only a painful reminder of a time in which freedom was just a dream, when it appeared as though even God had abandoned them.
I would not wish such a thought on my worst enemy, and neither should any person with a beating heart.
It’s time to take it down.
— Charles R. Jones, second-year history and political science student